No. 6
July 6, 2026
250th Anniversary of U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776
• Who Is "We the
People" – That Is the Question
• Rights by Virtue of Being Human
250th Anniversary of U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776
Who Is "We the People" – That Is the Question
A feature of the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence is that everything is confusing. There is a lot of talk about the arrangements which were brought into being in the 17th century, declaimed in the Declaration of Independence, 1776 and subsequently enshrined in the Constitution, 1787. The interpretations of what they mean are many, but their significance is covered up behind many veils.
Also noteworthy is that this is a time when those arrangements have in fact been undone; they no longer function. This is especially true of the system of representation enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1787 to give the Declaration of Independence governing forms. The result is that strange paradoxes emerge which have no solutions. How to tackle this is a matter of concern worthy of discussion aimed at providing modern definitions of democracy and equality which open a path to progress.
The Declaration of Independence, proclaims: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."
The Declaration concludes: "... We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States, in General Congress, Assembled appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States... that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."
As for the U.S. Constitution, the Preamble lays out the fundamental purposes of government in the U.S.: to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.
The phrase "We the People" means that, in theory it is either the multitude of people that have contracted with government and a covenant exists which authors a representative -- which does not make sense because a constitution constitutes, it does not contract -- or, "We the people" is the personification of the state which can be represented by its president and the executive power. This too is problematic because it leaves out the demos, the people -- in other words democracy itself -- which connotes a condition of civil war.
What is being represented by the name "We the people" is an avatar. In Indian philosophy an avatar refers to a graphical or physical representation of a person, idea, or deity. The image is one of a power coming down from the gods, which takes a form.
Today, the conditions which exist are mostly said to be caused by capitalism or global warming or greed or ignorance and the like. Empirical evidence is given to illustrate or prove whatever cause is given. In this form of argument, in a situation in which the majority of people do not have private property, agency is given to private property, to a tiny minority. Why? How? The demos are left out again.
People are said to have voluntarily signed themselves into slavery as if what is a person is based on the representations provided in the 17th century by the British political theorist Thomas Hobbes, widely considered to be a founding father of modern political philosophy. This representation, incorporated into the thinking of the U.S. "founding fathers" when they wrote the U.S. Declaration of Independence and then the U.S. Constitution, cannot sort out any problems -- neither those the rulers nor the peoples are facing today. Their theory of representation cannot address the social relations and whole ensemble of human relations that are indispensable and which exist independent of any individual's will.
Like the name democracy, the name "We the People" is given as the personification for what is called a sovereign representative. Said to enshrine the principle of sovereignty, the author of said sovereignty is the person of state. Why this is the case and why it should be the case today is seldom addressed.
Representative democracy is said to deal with the multitude, with an entire population of people that belong to a given state, as the Constitution puts it, "We the people of the United States." The multitude, the majority, have membership in this state, while the state has authority to hold that multitude together thereby forsaking civil war. One rationale given for this structure is that a single person of state is needed because, without the state, the multitude itself will fall apart. Another rationale is that people would not want to work on their own; they are fundamentally lazy, so they must be coerced by a state to do so. The starting point for this argument is that people are not productive on their own, whether as individuals or collectives. The justification given is that on their own, people would cheat and lie and steal and be corrupted. To control this multitude, a state is needed with the power to control use of force, coercion and corruption.
The conception that comes with this representation is that the person of state is an actual person -- with a difference. One difference is that this person has the monopoly right to demand an obligation from the multitude because this is what the Covenant they entered into established. The reason given is this is the only way to control violence. This one person of state can demand an obligation based on possessing power, including inflicting death, punishment, the power to wage war and obligate others to do so. To take all these actions, which are listed in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution (1788), this person of state has a monopoly on the use of force/violence.
The deal is that the state will provide for security against violence. Yet the U.S. state is the most violent there is. The theory based on Covenant Thesis, as given rise to by Hobbes, which others contributed to in subsequent periods, cannot address this reality. It cannot solve the problem of the extreme use of violence for obliteration nor the lack of mechanisms to hold the state or its representatives accountable.
The principle in the U.S. Constitution for this power of the state is attributed to "We the People" but, in fact, refers to the signers of the Constitution, the men of property at the time, those with power, who defined rights as privileges. The Preamble reads:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
There are three different parts to consider.
The first is the issue of authority. It is inspired by old notions in which a monarchy exercises supreme power and principles are given to constitute the state. Within this, the basic concept of the Constitution is that there needs to be an authority above party, above the factions and their private individual interests. There must be something neutral, above their contention.
Today it is necessary to address the concept of authority enshrined in the Constitution because it no longer holds water. Those writing about the President as the personification of a monarch do not address this basic concept of the Constitution, even more needed given that the president has the power to launch nuclear weapons.
The second part of the Constitution takes into account the proposition that the authority is either represented by a single individual or small number of individuals, which gives rise to the need to control the bureaucracy, which today is massive. Due to the factions among the oligarchs which contend for power, it is necessary to mediate between the executive (whether referring to a monarchy or republic) and the bureaucracy. That is supposed to be accomplished through the mediation of representatives. In the case of the U.S. this is the role of the Congress.
The third part deals with the notion of universal interests and the position that the military is not to take sides among the factions; it should represent the interests of the whole. According to the theory, the arrangements allow the rulers to control the violence of factions. The first sentence James Madison writes in Federalist Papers #10, The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection, is: "Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction."
A fundamental problem with all of this is that it tells us nothing about the system of rule no matter whether the supreme power is concentrated in the hands of a single ruler or a small, unaccountable group. In either case, neither the system of rule nor the nature of power and how it is wielded are revealed.
The opposite of democracy is given as autocracy -- a system where absolute power is concentrated in the hands of a single ruler or a small, unaccountable group. Whether talking about war, or democracy, civilian or military rule, cold war or hot war -- they are all given as a representation of something that exists, as if it exists in incomplete form, as if what the human species stands for is imperfect but striving for perfection.
The representation given is the naming of objects or phenomenon as something that has agency, as if it is a human person. A significant problem is that arguments given today tend to separate humans and nature. Some say that humans have become a natural force. For instance, humans can artificially create temperatures equal to that of the sun many times over. The two -- humans and nature -- are seen as two external entities, two separate external phenomena. The problem then becomes that we must mediate to bring humans together, harmonize them, rank them, bring them under our control.
This separation of humans and nature has been the case since the late 1500s, when the capitalist mode of production emerged and replaced feudal relations. However, especially by the 17th and 18th centuries, labour and nature could no longer be separated when talking about the activity of humans. The working class took its place at the centre of all developments. Only in thought could a separation exist.
The two are not separate. Both are necessary for the development of human productive powers. The rulers attempt to deal with this problem that they are not separate by reducing human beings to a species which exists only as a productive force, a force considered not only external to what one is working on, like nature, but dispensable. The only harmonization which can take place is then said to be performed through the mediation of politics called a representative democracy.
This gives us an image that democracy is a personification of human political powers that have evolved, which gives rise to a conception that we are dealing with both evolution and revolution. Even though the democracy is given outside of history, its development is seen as evolving, through history, and then it is said that history is periodically broken up by revolutions.
Should we say that evolution gives rise to revolution, that they are related to one another? This leads to the problem that the conception does not help to explain what is going on in the world today, whether in the United States or in terms of its relations with countries it currently seeks to control and dominate. It is also claimed by those promoting the concept, that this evolution of political systems has now ended, with liberal democracy being the end of human development when it comes to governing systems. This raises the obvious question: with the clear failure of existing liberal democratic systems what then is to come next?
(Based on Conversations held by the Ideological Studies Centre, 2008-2026)
Rights by Virtue of Being Human
The principles contained in the U.S. Constitution are not pertinent when considering the question of rights and defending rights. Rights are not principles. They are acts of being. Rights by virtue of being human precisely means that they are not abstractions one aspires to but are established and affirmed by human beings with their acts of being. This is very different to saying that rights exist independent of time and space, brought down to earth by avatars, which the U.S. Constitution does, with principles such as "all men are created equal" and declaring the striving for "a more perfect union."
The principles spoken about in the Constitution are said to exist in incomplete form and the task is presented as one of "living up to them." For instance, it is common to hear it said, as Obama does, that "We are a better country than this," followed by statements like we are not living up to our principles, that we must fulfill the aspiration to be a more perfect union, and so forth. It is not accidental that in its origin, the definition for aspiration could be given as hot air.
To get at the conception of rights by virtue of being human, what is required is to cognize human relations as distinct from principles. This can be done by affirming our own vantage point of the Necessity for Change, captured in the phrase Understanding requires an act of conscious participation of the individual, an act of finding out. Based on recognizing Necessity for Change, it is possible to establish a vantage point of one's own for relations of humans and humans and humans and nature. The ensemble of human relations is indispensable and independent of individual will, as distinct from principles that come down from on high.
From the vantage point of the rulers, it is not possible to see beyond mediation, with knowledge broken up between different bureaus (into departments, silos) and mediated by sovereign representatives of government who sit in the Congress. Our vantage point of the Necessity for Change starts by virtue of being human which calls upon us to activate the human factor/social consciousness and carry out definite affirmative activities.
For the rulers, there is the projection of perfection, of a total democracy vs., for example, fascism, or the split between the illusion of a perfect union and reality. What is ignored is the reality we live in and the struggle for political power within those material conditions as they exist. What is required is to elaborate the kind of politics which need to be developed at this time by virtue of being human.
We are addressing this question of the politics of rights by virtue of being human, as opposed to some moral principle. End of History arguments say there is liberal democracy that has reached a state of perfection, its pinnacle. That is the moral principle. Since the 1950s, it means there must be political sovereignty (rendered as choice by election in a multi-party system) and consumer sovereignty (rendered as choice through markets). To not have these two choices is to have something different than democracy.
In the thinking of the rulers, the bottom line for this is what is called democratic peace. The principle involved is that democracies do not go to war with other democracies. If you belong to the club of democracies, the United States will not go to war with you. This is the view that was developed by Hobbes in the 1600s coming out of the English Civil War.
In the 1660s, to overcome the condition of civil war, Hobbes posits the conception of natural persons and he develops the artificial person. He says that the multitude covenants each with each, and then altogether covenant to create an artificial person of state. Even though states existed before this time, this is the first time the vocabulary of something called the state emerges. The conception of the state was further developed in the 18th century as part of the European enlightenment.
When Hobbes speaks of the artificial person of state, this person of state has monopoly right over the use of violence and coercion. The person of state deliberates over all the various issues put forward as desirable in the Preamble to the Constitution -- crime and punishment, war and peace, revenue. In his masterwork Leviathan, when dealing with the Covenant of the multitude authorizing the person of state to be their representative, Hobbes put it this way: "I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man or to this assembly of men." He says, "Covenants without sword are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all" (Chapter 17).
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution is the language of the artificial person of state. It was called the personne morale, the moral person of the state, an incarnation of morality. Then comes the personification of this principle, a sovereign established above party factions, party egos, which has the universal interest of the community in mind, which can be mediated by representatives.
Who does this moral person of state represent? It cannot represent the multitude who have no authority because they have already entered into the Covenant in which they are said to have contracted this moral person of the state to represent them. Henceforth, whatever their representative says represents them, makes it so. The idea is that no matter what anyone might think about coercion and corruption, they must feel satisfied that at least there is this moral person of state, as opposed to a tyrant in the shape of a monarch which the people rebelled against. In other words, for Hobbes, morality, justice and contracts only exist after the state is formed. The ultimate function of government is not to govern by goodwill, but to enforce laws through the fear of consequence, thereby making it rationally safe for people to cooperate.
Today, the consciousness the people are developing by waging the struggle in defence of their rights and the rights of all is that what is taking place is Not in Our Name.
A Different Kind of Political Power
WWI and WWII gave rise of a different kind of political power, that of the working class, of the Soviets, not on the basis of the pronouncements and rule based on moral principles as in the case of the bourgeois constitutions but on the basis of democratic centralism – that membership in the state recognizes the equality of all who are empowered to participate in taking decisions and overseeing their implementation. The state was not established in the name of a sovereign representative and moral principle called democracy but as Soviet power. This Soviet power was essential in defeating fascism and Nazism that came out of representational democracy.
Hitler participated in electoral politics. He consolidated power based on Article 48 of the German Constitution, which gave powers to the president when faced with crisis. Article 48 had been used many times before in the 1920s. Hitler was just one more case. He then acted to obliterate the Constitution as necessary to prevail against Soviet power.
The coalition of democracy at that time, during the Anti-Fascist United Front, included finance capitalists and their democracy and Soviet power based on democratic centralism. After WWII, by the mid-1950s, in the Soviet Union and people's democracies, the workers were deprived of the means to exercise Soviet power by the imposition of a form of Party dictatorship used to disempower the people. Instrumental in this was not only the conversion of the USSR into a nuclear superpower which contended for world domination with the United States, but the ability of the state and government in both the USSR and the U.S. to direct nuclear weapons to destroying any type of politics. The constant destruction of any type of politics is ongoing today to the extent that the restructuring of the state has become its all-round obliteration.
The Call of History
We say there is an ensemble of human relations. When we have a vantage point we must deal with this ensemble. An ensemble is not a matter of aggregating. It includes all the productive powers. Human productive relations have developed to the point where today more than 50 per cent of the world population lives in urban areas. China is now 50 per cent urban. Relationships between city and countryside have shifted drastically.
There are other social relations like those between intellectual and physical labour which are not distinct, the one from the other. Relations between males and females are coming apart at the seams right now. Another part is the social relation from one generation to the next. In the past, the worry about whether there would be a future generation did not exist. For instance, the conception among the Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island was to always act in a manner that took into account the next seven generations. Actions were taken integral to the next seven generations.
Now humans have created technology that can obliterate the human species in the form of nuclear weapons, climate disasters, etc. These are the ensemble of human relations that cannot be dealt with by representative democracy, through viewing problems in silos, with different bureaucracies, and so forth.
What is introduced as technology has everything to do with the human factor/social consciousness. Technology, the relations between humans and nature, is an organ of humanity, and like any organ, necessary for further development. The development and use of technology depend on the human factor/social consciousness.
The rulers keep promoting the idea that nuclear war will start by accident whereas it cannot be called an accident when it is related to a system that has been in place for more than 70 years.
During the Spanish Civil War, the image painted by Pablo Picasso in 1937 of the Basque town Guernica was used to depict the aerial bombing of cities. At that time, a category called civilian was developed, as opposed to citizens. Because bombing was done by the military from the air, the military put forward the conception that a human person was a civilian, not a soldier. Then WWII began to tear apart what was previously held together by the moral person of the state, which was the fundamental problem of all constitutions coming out of democratic revolutions: the split between a civilian member of civil society and the citizen member of political society. This was propounded by Rousseau and others for whom the problem was always given as a paradox.
An example is the one which asks: if you have private individuals in civil society with private interests in their power, how do you restrain those selfish interests without the community coming apart? The answer of the rulers is to enforce a conception of popular sovereignty in which citizenship remains an abstraction. This is given as giving some civil rights while restraining selfish interests, especially those of workers and their labour power. In this situation everything is divided into two, the citizen and the individual in a civil society. As long as we keep things mediated by the vantage point provided by that moral person of state, then people will accept their obligations and punishment and feel powerless to stop those in power from waging war and determining rights as privileges.
Rights as privileges are a continuation of medievalism. Many labour struggles in the 19th century, for example, were tied to laws based on a relationship between master and servant, recognized as slavery. The body of law dealing with labour struggles were those of master and servant with rights as privileges granted by the master. What comes up against this is acting by virtue of being human.
There is a big split when it comes to conceptions of human rights. One conception is that when speaking about human rights there is a human essence, an attribute. It is tantamount to saying that the attribute of the productive power is the actual power.
An attribute of something is a property. For instance, redness can be an attribute of a rose, but the rose is not an attribute of redness. Today, it is commonplace to hear irrational arguments tantamount to saying that the rose is an attribute of redness. The predicate is substituted for the subject, red rose. This is a problem going back to the moral person of state and its development today in the context of everything coming apart which makes the situation more dangerous.
The other conception is that rights exist by virtue of being human, where the human factor/social consciousness must be activated. One way is as moral principle, coming out of public opinion, with what is a human person to be debated. The other recognizes that all social relations and the whole ensemble of human relations are independent of individual will. This is a fact, not a principle. Rights exist in their affirmation.
Some claim today that Nazis are trying to take our democratic state away from us and human rights are an aspiration, like the perfect union is an aspiration. The other is that there is an established standard that what is human is not a question of public opinion; it is the reference point that we begin with. It is not something to question and debate as you would with public opinion. There is no mystery of what the human standard of being human is. By virtue of being human requires a human being making claims on society as opposed to human rights being a moral principle where one person or groups of persons have claims against another – one immoral, the other moral.
What is happening now, including all the threats being made, stems from the original notion of natural and artificial person. The relation between political and civil society is not only unravelling; it is being torn asunder. And it looks like nobody among the rulers has a clue what to do about it. When Trump was elected, the first time, and more so the second time, no one knew what to make of it. There is a situation where nothing can be controlled by the existing state. The arguments that have developed over the centuries are no longer valid. Even finding the vocabulary of how to talk about developments is very difficult.
When talking with people there are some conceptions so deeply ingrained, it is difficult to settle scores with the old conscience of society. The slogan Who Decides? We Decide! is accepted as legitimate, but then not taken up as politics. In Louisiana when the known KKK Grand Wizard David Duke was running for Governor in 1991, Republicans wanted to disown him but could not do it. For their part, the Democrats put forward a known crook. There were even bumper stickers saying, "I'm voting for the crook." When the election took place, one of the largest turn-outs by African Americans who took the stand that David Duke could not be elected took place. They said that no matter what, he could not be elected. They took that stand. It was not a matter of voting for the lesser of two evils. It was a matter that there was no choice, Duke had to be blocked, period. The difference is not in ideas, but in the morale of people to act.
The instruments of coercion developed because one class had leisure to do that. It is not the other way around. Today, this older model of control with the moral person of state saying what can and what cannot be done has broken apart. Marx said the paradox must be sorted out by democratic revolution.
Completing the democratic revolution remains the problem to this day. How the working class can come to power and stay in power remains the problem which requires a solution. Everything that has gone into the conception of the state -- notions of community, family, machinery, everything -- now makes no sense. The importance of giving rise to modern definitions lies in how one classifies what is going on and the guides this provides for what action is taken.
(Based on Conversations held by the Ideological Studies Centre, 2008-2026)
Modern Definitions
Vague notions about what existed in the past; fiery essays against the "enemy"; the incessant inciting of passions against all one disagrees with; none of these can be considered a modern way of doing things. However, this is not where controversy either begins or ends. The burning question of the day is that the productive forces have advanced to such an extent that there is the need for theoretical and ideological considerations of a calibre which can assist these productive forces to break away from the integuments of the old thought stemming from the old relations of production. Both in class terms, where millions of modern proletarians comprise the social basis of modern production, and in terms of the scientific and technical revolution, the world is on the brink of either making one of the greatest advances in history or experiencing one of its greatest disasters. Once released, the productive forces are bound to create an entirely new society, a society fit for human beings or, if kept bottled up, there will be a disaster of unheard of proportions.
In order to tackle the problem of releasing the productive forces, modern definitions of society have to be recognized. Once it is recognized that modern society is the condition for the perpetuation of a system on which it is based, it stands to reason that the precondition for change in society is changing the system. From where should changing the system start? Just to observe some negative symptoms and draft a programmatic call to eliminate them is not enough. Even to trace the basis of a symptom and take the remedial action will not work. What is needed, first and foremost, is to work out a modern perspective, a modern definition of progress, a modern conception for the high road of civilization. The building of this perspective is the recognition of the interests of the working class and broad masses of the people and of society itself.
A modern definition of progress necessarily has as its starting point a modern definition of all interests in contention in the objective sense. The old controversy that there is a conflict between the individual and the collective does not suffice. It does not fully reveal what is really in conflict at this time and how it should be harmonized in order to open the path for the progress of society. If it were to be recognized that there are collectives in a society and that these collectives not only have interests which clash with each other and with the general interests of society, but that within the collective there is a clash between individual interests and those of the collective, and that the interests of the individual clash with the general interests of society, this will lead to a modern definition of the key problem which must be resolved at this time. Its resolution will open the path to social progress.
The starting point of this resolution is the demand that a system must be established which recognizes that all individuals have fundamental inherent rights which originate from the fact that they are human beings. In sum, the fact that an individual has inviolable rights by virtue of being human has to be the perspective, the modern definition, the basis on which all interests can be harmonized and the path to progress of society can be opened.
The unprecedented and colossal advance of the productive forces has put a huge strain on the old consciousness and old relations of production at this time. In a matter of just five years, modern consciousness has arisen about the political and economic system. More and more people demand their right to exercise control over their lives. In the political sphere, consciousness about the political process and awareness that people must have the right to select candidates before they can exercise their right to elect a representative to Parliament is a radical departure from passively accepting the old system in which modern-day slave drivers are elected on the basis of a universal franchise. An equally radical consciousness can be seen in the demand of the people to increase investments in social programs in order to overcome the economic crisis. There is also an increasing consciousness about the necessity for working out theoretical and ideological considerations on the basis of present-day reality instead of by submitting to dogmas. This spontaneous consciousness is the reflection of the pressure of the productive forces on the old consciousness and old relations of production. However, there is an increasing amount of work being done to transform this consciousness into planned activity towards a definite goal. It is an indication that the productive forces are prevailing over the old and it delineates a path for the creation of a modern system on which a modern society can be erected.
It has to be recognized that at this historical juncture, because of the level of the development of the productive forces, all human beings are born to society. The notion that a person is only born to a family and that society has nothing to do with it, has to be discarded. However, there is a demand coming from the Old according to which society must not recognize that human beings are born to it and that individuals must fend for themselves.
It is often observed and said that animals accept a certain level of responsibility only towards their own offspring, not towards their species. How can the demand that society must not take any responsibility towards its members be considered human? Society has emerged on the basis of people producing their livelihood together. How can the issue of a livelihood be left to the individual if the basis of procuring it is social? No human person can make her or his living on their own, speaking generally, within the conditions when the production process is social. This is to recognize that the technical and material content of the economy and of the relations of production presupposes the existence of a social process of production. If production is social, how can the demand that individuals should fend for themselves be accepted? It is based on an archaic definition known as the law of the jungle. There is no reason whatsoever to recognize the law of the jungle as the foundation of a modern society.
For the working class to emancipate itself it must recognize that all individuals have inviolable rights by virtue of being human and, secondly, that society has an obligation towards all its members. Starting with these two fundamental presuppositions, the working class will propose that, in the sphere of the economy, investments in social programs should increase to such an extent that all members are guaranteed the highest possible standard of living within the material and cultural level their society has attained and the level of the development of the productive forces must lead to raising the standards even further. In the political sphere, the working class would demand that there should be no election without selection, meaning that they choose the candidates, not line up behind choices over which they exercise no control. The working class would demand the establishment of a modern democracy in which people rule themselves. Political parties must be subordinated to the needs of the people and not the other way around. People have to be rulers themselves. Political mechanisms which can facilitate this have to be brought into being. The working class will also declare that all its theoretical and ideological considerations are verifiable and that they are all in the service of opening the path to society's progress.
Recognition of the inviolable rights of people by virtue of being human and that society must provide for all brings forth the important question that there are obligations which an individual must fulfill by virtue of being a member of society. It is generally understood that there can be no rights without duties. However, when society recognizes the fundamental issue that all individuals have rights by virtue of being human and that it must provide for all, the demand also emerges out of life itself that all individuals have the duty to defend, strengthen and extend a system so ordered and the society based on guidelines derived therefrom. They have the duty to create such a system, as it does not exist at this time.
Will all collectives comprising the society agree with these two fundamental principles? The answer is no. Some collectives would agree and others will not. Such an attitude would depend on how a collective is faring under the present system. All those which are favoured by the present system in which the two fundamental principles are not recognized would oppose these modern definitions of what rights are and what society is. The financial oligarchy is the most opposed to these two fundamental principles and even though this is understandable, it is not acceptable. What is not understandable and also not acceptable is why more than a few labour leaders do not recognize the two fundamental principles.
It is to be presupposed that all people want to open the path for the progress of society. It is our contention that such a path cannot be opened without recognizing these two fundamental principles. Furthermore, neither the general interests of society will be served nor the specific interests of individuals if these two fundamental principles are not recognized as the basis of a modern society. In other words, all individuals, all collectives in whose interest it is to open the path for progress, and society itself will have to insist on eliminating the social basis of those who become obstacles to progress. They will have to work to elaborate their theoretical and ideological considerations so that they can accomplish their goal. This is the sum and substance of modern definitions.
(Originally published in Discussion Quarterly, Vol. 1 No. 1, Spring 1994, slightly edited for publication in 2026)
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